Last summer, I talked about my love of scary stories and horror novels, and specifically how I always tend to read them in the summertime.  As I mentioned then, maybe it has something to do with the abundance of sunshine in the summertime, and the stark contrast between the darkness inside the book and the brightness outside.  Maybe because I have the time to really sink into the atmosphere and sensations of a book in the summer, more than I do over the school year.  But, as I continue my summertime horror-binge, I had few more thoughts about The Scary Stuff and (naturally), some recommendations to pass on.

First off, horror novels, the really good horror novels that nestle under your skin, that stain your hands, that linger in your dreams, take a heck of a lot of work.  A lot of writers do the gory stuff, and, frankly, I don’t find those things too scary.  Stomach-churning?  Absolutely.  But the kind of horror that floats my boat really aren’t that gory or explicit at all.  My favorite horror novels are the ones that create a fully-immersive world for me to believe in, and characters who are real enough for me to feel for them, and the plight into which they fall.  When my heart and mind are engaged (instead of my stomach), it’s a lot easier to scare me.  This takes a lot of work, and no considerable amount of talent, over and above a knowledge of the human anatomy and how to take it apart.  As a result, some horror novels feature some of the most beautiful, descriptive, and insightful writing I’ve come across, precisely because they need to build that emotional and imaginative bond in order to have the proper effect on the reader.

Secondly, as a reader with anxiety–and book anxiety, to boot–scary stories are actually really helpful.  My mind really loves jumping to the worst case scenario, to the ‘what-ifs’, to all the things that could go wrong–and I spend a lot of time and energy trying to ignore those thoughts, or silence those worries, and it’s really tiring.  Horror novels provide a safe space to explore those fears, by not only presenting you with a worst-case scenario (sometimes its realistic, sometimes its supernatural or extraterrestrial), but also by reveling in it.  A lot of these books also leave a lot of room for the reader to insert their own thoughts and fears into the story.  I’m thinking of the scene in ‘Salem’s Lot where the Glick boys are in the woods, and Danny Glick says he sees “it”.  We, as readers, are never really told what it is, or what it looks like…which gives us plenty of room to place our own bogeymen into that space.  Good horror books let us take our fears and worries and concerns out of the shadows and explore them, an act which takes a lot of power away from those fears.

So, if you’re looking to explore the world of scary stuff for the first time, or searching around for a new fix, here are a few of my recent favorite horror selections to give you some summertime shivers…

A Head Full of Ghosts: When Stephen King says a story scared him, we should sit up and pay attention, but I wasn’t sold on it until about the last 50 pages.  But oh, those last fifty pages made this book one of the best I have read in a really, really long time.  Fifteen years ago, the Barrett family (of Beverly, Massachusetts) were the subject of an enormously popular reality show called The Possession, that allegedly documented fourteen-year-old Marjorie’s struggle with demonic possession.  Now, Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, is telling her side of the story to a journalist who is hoping to get behind the now-famous scenes of the show to what really happened.  This is a heartbreaking, and ultimately horrifying, intoxicating story of familial relations and the fragile ties that bind us, about the desperation and despair of failure, and asks a lot of questions that are impossible to accurately answer.  This is a very tricky book to describe without giving things away, so….just read it.  Then we can talk.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things: This book falls very squarely into the category of cerebral horror, where the reader is given just enough information to follow the plot, but not nearly enough information to feel comfortable.  What we know is that the narrator (who is not named, despite a number of summaries that state the contrary, grr….) is driving with her boyfriend to meet his parents.  But there are so many weird, off-putting, seemingly incongruous events and conversations taking place in the course of this story that it becomes very clear there is far more going on beneath the surface.  Add to this the snippets of conversation we overhear throughout this book, and the stage is set for a book that will play around with your mind for everyone of its 200 pages.  Though the ending of this book was a little too psuedo-deep/intellectual for my tastes, if you like narrative tricks and literary conjuring tricks, along with a thick, increasingly tense and inexplicably hostile atmosphere in your reading, this book is definitely for you.

Security: We recently featured Gina Wohlsdorf’s debut in a recent post, and, since then, and I am here to tell you that All The Reviews are right–this is a remarkably told, viscously creative, and expertly-balanced story that keeps readers on edge by telling them everything….except ‘why’.  Manderley has been billed as the most luxurious, and the most secure hotel in the world.  But, days before its opening, a Killer is stalking the halls and rooms of Manderley, killing off its staff one by one.  The story is narrated by an anonymous member of Manderley’s security staff, who watches all the action from the totally isolated security room on the hotel’s top floor…with less impartiality than one might expect.  There are times when the narrative diverges, sometimes visibly on the page, as we watch characters going up and down the elevators, entering different rooms on different floors, allowing us to keep tabs on them at all times–but never quite sure what is going to happen next.  Though there is a more gruesomeness in this book than most, Wohlsdorf handles it with grown-up discretion, and tempers it by offering insights into her characters and their relationships…and even providing a pitch-perfect love story in the midst of everything that balances this book perfectly and makes it one that is impossible to put down.

There will definitely be more scary stuff to come readers, but for now–enjoy!